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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS Scheduler
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (12th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th)
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (20th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS Scheduler is 3.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS Scheduler3.4%
ActiveBatch by Redwood3.2%
VisualCron2.2%
Other91.2%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
Sai  - PeerSpot reviewer
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
Automation has streamlined complex data workflows and now saves time on recurring reporting
To improve ActiveBatch by Redwood, the UI could be more modern and intuitive, and another thing that comes to mind is that it can feel overwhelming when workflows become large and complex. Troubleshooting can take extra time when there are multiple dependencies, jobs, and integrations running together. Better visualization of workflow relationships and easier debugging would really help. I would also appreciate seeing more simplified onboarding and documentation for newer users, as there is a learning curve at the beginning. Another improvement area could be smarter analytics or AI-driven recommendations, such as proactively identifying workflow bottlenecks, failed job patterns, or optimization suggestions instead of relying mostly on manual monitoring. From an operational perspective, faster configuration for integrations and cloud-based workflows would make implementation smoother, especially in environments working heavily with APIs and data pipelines. I have covered the main points regarding needed improvements. Overall, the platform is very capable and reliable for automation and workflow scheduling, especially in data-heavy environments. Most of the improvements I want are around making it easier for day-to-day use, such as a more intuitive UI, simpler troubleshooting for complex workflows, better onboarding for newer users, and more intelligent monitoring or optimization insights. The core functionality is strong, and the biggest opportunity is improving the overall user experience and simplifying operational management.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"JAMS gives operations teams a single place to manage, monitor, and track job execution, which from my perspective as a developer improves coordination between teams because everyone has visibility into the status of critical workloads and simplifies troubleshooting since job history, execution status, and other relevant information are all easily accessible, ensuring that business-critical processes are executed consistently and reliably across the organization."
"By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this."
"Because we have gone from a lot of manual processes to automated processes with JAMS, we have been able to free up IT staff time, and for just the Technical Operations Center team that I manage, it has saved about 20 hours a week."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"One of the things I like the most, as a SQL DBA, is the fact that we can manipulate tables in the background. Also, the fact that you can have your own views and work with the product the way it fits best is a very helpful feature."
"This feature helps my team day-to-day by running hundreds and hundreds of jobs on JAMS in a timely fashion, which is extremely important and sensitive, providing a lot of reporting to the entire firm and beyond."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"The product is easy to use."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"ActiveBatch by Redwood has positively impacted my organization by efficiently managing a significant volume of data and workflow between our database and applications on the web browser."
"We use the main job-scheduling feature. It's the only thing we use in the tool. That's the reason we are using the tool: to reduce costs by replacing manual tasks with automated tasks and to perform regular, repetitive tasks in a more reliable way."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to trigger workflows, one after another, based on success, without having to worry about overlapping workflows. The ability to integrate our BI, analytics, and our data quality jobs is also valuable"
"The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."
"We look at different products and this is definitely a very good one."
"The product offers a centralized platform for managing activities across many environments, applications, etc."
"I find this to be the easiest product that I have ever used, especially compared to Robot Schedule and CA AutoSys as well as an in-house scheduling software that I had designed and developed at one time."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
 

Cons

"The cost has definitely gone up tremendously. That is where I do know, as much as the feature sets are there, and if the newly acquired company is going to be doing a pushback, they might just say, 'Do we still need to pay this much? Or at that point, should we look into an alternative?'"
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."
"They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing."
"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable."
"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out."
"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."
"Some preferences and permissions are not quite self-explanatory, but those are rather advanced features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."
"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."
"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."
"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."
"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."
"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"ROI is one month."
"The price is a bit high."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technica...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
In terms of improvements, I believe JAMS can enhance its user interface for better user experiences. I would like to ...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My primary use case for JAMS is enterprise workload automation and batch job orchestration. I use it to schedule and ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I was not directly involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing decisions for ActiveBatch by Redwood, so my exp...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved with a more modern and intuitive user interface, faster performance for very...
What is your primary use case for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My main use case for ActiveBatch by Redwood is enterprise workload automation, job scheduling, and orchestrating busi...
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Also Known As

No data available
ActiveBatch
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.